


Possibly, Maybe I'm Falling for You

by Kacka



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Fluff, Most characters just mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-19
Updated: 2016-02-19
Packaged: 2018-05-21 13:43:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6053730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kacka/pseuds/Kacka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bellamy had thought about trying to talk to the cute blonde who comes in during almost every one of his afternoon shifts at Grounders Coffee. He hadn’t imagined it would take her literally dropping out of the sky and landing on top of him in a flurry of curse words to give him the chance to do so.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Possibly, Maybe I'm Falling for You

**Author's Note:**

> Title from 'Falling In Love at a Coffee Shop' because a) that's what happens in this fic, and b) it's punny.

Bellamy had thought about trying to talk to the cute blonde who comes in during almost every one of his afternoon shifts at Grounders Coffee. He hadn’t imagined it would take her literally dropping out of the sky and landing on top of him in a flurry of curse words to give him the chance to do so.

“Um,” he wheezes, trying to figure out what just happened. “Ouch.”

“I am so, so sorry!” She exclaims, scrambling to get off of him and elbowing him in the gut as she goes. When her body weight is no longer compressing his lungs, he breathes in deeply and takes stock of himself. Nothing feels broken. Everything, he thinks, is mostly in tact. He might be a little bruised, but it could have been a lot worse. 

“Are you alright?” She asks, offering a hand to help him up. It’s tiny and pale and soft and a little comical, but he takes it anyway.

“You’re the med student, right?” He nods to the textbook that luckily missed his flailing limbs. “You tell me.”

“Well, what hurts?” She’s looking up at him, blue eyes wide with concern, and it throws him for a moment. He shakes it off and answers, “Nothing. I think I’m fine.”

“You’re not concussed?”

“Seriously, I’m okay,” he reassures her. He’d stepped into the alley to call Octavia, and he hadn’t anticipated running into anyone back there, much less the girl Miller refers to as his coffeeshop crush. 

He doesn’t really know her, but he sees her several times a week and she always tries to guess the trivia. They crack jokes about it sometimes, or commiserate occasionally about how their workload is going to kill them. She always cleans her own table and tips well, and when she’s there with other people she lights up the room. They’re not friends by any stretch of the imagination, but they’re friendly and she seems like a cool person that he wants to get to know more. This isn’t how he thought he’d do it.

“Where did you come from?” He asks, looking up at the rear wall of Grounders in confusion.

“I fell out of the bathroom window,” she says, sheepish, picking up her textbook and shaking it until some gravel falls out. “But it was farther down than I thought and I lost my balance.”

“How’d you get up there?” She’s closer to his height than he would have guessed, but she’s still short enough that it’s an impressive feat.

“Climbed up on the sink.” She’s watching him with amusement in her eyes, in the set of her mouth, in the tilt of her chin. “That’s really your first question?”

“I figure there are only a handful of reasons you might be trying to make a discreet escape, and you come here often enough I don’t really think you just robbed us.”

“Maybe I was casing the place.”

“Maybe,” he concedes. “But I kind of figured you’re trying to avoid someone. Trying really hard, apparently.” He eyes her, weighing the next sentence in his mind before adding, “My money's on Scary Eye Makeup Girl, not Floppy-Haired Dudebro.”

Her expression falters slightly, but she doesn’t seem to think he’s creepy or overstepping because she says, “Why is that?”

“Because he hardly ever orders your vanilla latte alongside his usual anymore,” Bellamy shrugs. He hadn’t meant to be paying so much attention, but he’s pretty good with faces and– well, it would be harder for him not to notice her. “Plus, he doesn’t really come here as often since he had that awkward encounter with Take-No-Shit Latina. Scary Eye Makeup is way more likely to be here when you are.”

She takes this in quietly, then sits on the steps to the loading dock with a sigh.

“They have names,” she points out. “You probably know their names, if you remember that much about their drink orders and when they’re likely to be here.”

“Lexa,” he says, sitting down next to her. “Finn. Raven. I’m not actively trying to be creepy.”

“It just comes so naturally,” she laughs.

“I study anthropology,” he offers, not sure if she even wants to know anything about him. She’s never really tried to initiate conversation, though she’s never shied away in the past when he’s chatted with her. “My main interest is in ancient cultures, but one of my classes got me thinking about microcosms.”

“Like coffeeshops,” she nods, thinking it over.

“Exactly. And what small-scale cultures say about our culture at large. So I started trying to observe while I was working, and, well, you kind of got caught in the middle of it.”

“I get caught in the middle of lots of things,” she muses, tucking her knees under her chin and staring into the middle distance. He sees her sit like that sometimes, when she’s holding flashcards, or with her charcoal pencil poised midair. He knows it means her mind is working in overdrive, and that she’s pulling some kind of genius out of her hat like a magician. “I guess it’s safe to assume you know my name, then,” she says, her eyes focusing and landing on his.

“Clarke.”

“And you’re Bellamy.” She smiles and he can’t help but smile back. “In the interest of full disclosure, I had to look at your nametag just now,” she admits. “If I saw you on the street–”

“Or fell on me in an alley.”

“–I’d know who you were, but I’m not quite as aware of my surroundings as you are.”

“It is hard to reach this level of observance without crossing fully into the stalker category.”

“Yeah, I’m not sure you haven’t made that transition,” she teases, looking around them. “You would have lost your money, by the way. I’m actually hiding from my mom’s fiancee.”

“Huh,” he says, adding this to the list of facts he knows about her. “You don’t like him?”

“He’s fine,” Clarke shrugs. “I’m pretty sure he’s a good guy. But things are awkward between me and my mom right now, and I didn’t want to put him in the position of feeling obligated to come talk to me, and then to try to talk me into calling her.” She sighs.

“And you couldn’t have just waited in the bathroom until he left?” Bellamy asks, smiling as he pictures Clarke hoisting herself up onto the sink and out the window. 

“That was my initial plan, but he didn’t leave.” She sounds exasperated, though whether it’s with herself or her mom’s fiancee, he isn’t sure. “He was sitting right by the door, too, so the bathroom window was really my only option.”

“Uh-huh,” he says, his voice emotionless with skepticism. “Next time, just give me a signal and I’ll slip you out the back door. Fewer casualties.”

“Will do,” she says, smiling wryly at him. “What were you doing out here anyway? You don’t smoke, do you? Because as an almost-licensed healthcare professional, I am fully authorized to pester you until you quit.”

“And to think, all the lectures I got about peer pressure in high school only prepared me to stand up to someone trying to persuade me to  _ start  _ smoking.” She scoffs and elbows his side in a friendly way. "No, I don’t smoke. I was on the phone.”

“Girlfriend?” She asks, overly casual. He bites the inside of his lip to stop himself from grinning.

“Sister,” he says, punching the home button and pulling up a picture of him and Octavia. It’s a selfie from when she got her wisdom teeth out. She’d been high as a kite on pain meds, her chipmunk cheeks at their most swollen, but she’d told him the whole car ride home what a good brother she thought he was. It’s one of his fondest memories, and he refuses to change the picture no matter how many times Octavia gets mad about it.

“Cute,” Clarke says, dry. “I’m sure she appreciates you showing that photo around.”

“She hates it,” he grins, chipper. “But if she knew I finally got the guts to talk to you, she might let it slide.”

Clarke blushes and looks down at her feet.

“She knows about me?”

“Only because one of the other baristas makes fun of me about you a lot. I never should have introduced her to Miller.”

“Beanie Guy,” she nods. He frowns until she explains, “My friend Monty has a crush on him. Otherwise I wouldn’t know his name either.”

“I’ve definitely heard about Monty,” Bellamy smirks. “I think his chances with Miller are good.”

“I’ll pass the message along. Why would Miller make fun of you?” She angles her body more to face him. He swallows and tries not to think about her knee pressed against his.

“Same reason I’m going to make fun of him about Monty,” Bellamy says, and it feels like a bigger confession than it is. He doesn’t really know her; he has little to lose. But he’s liked her from afar for long enough that this feels like a significant moment, and he doesn’t want to screw it up. “We all have our favorite customers,” he continues. “You’re definitely mine. I really look forward to seeing you come in.”

She’s quiet for a moment, which is completely nerve wracking.

“Maybe I should visit more often, then,” she says, and his heart leaps.

“I’m definitely in favor,” he says, leaning his knee against hers with more purpose. “I’m also in favor of taking you on a date sometime. Preferably outside of the coffee shop.”

“Well,” she says pragmatically. “I did almost give you a concussion. A date seems like a good way to make it up to you.”

Seeing her walk through Grounders’ front door remains a bright spot in his dull shifts, second only to leaning over the counter to kiss her hello. It’s not long before she gets Miller and Monty to stop circling each other, and Bellamy is glad for his friend but gladder, ultimately, that it mostly silences his shit-talking. At least, his shit-talking about Bellamy’s love life; shit-talking is one of the foundations of their friendship and Bellamy isn’t sure where they’d be if Miller completely removed that from the equation.

Clarke, at Octavia’s behest, gets him to change his lock screen to a picture of the two of them. He can’t say he really minds, because the picture she swaps in is one of her with his sister, smiling cheek to cheek. His two favorite people in one place.

Sure, he didn’t meet her the way he thought he would, but he wouldn’t change how it happened for the world.


End file.
